The brief was the prized antelope, twice over: the krishna-mriga or blackbuck was the great game and emblem of the Marwar desert, and the picture's job is to catch its leap without letting the animals turn into a herd-blur. Marwar was the right school because Jodhpur's painters did flat, alert wildlife studies on intense ochre ground better than anyone. So the composition is split into twin registers — two clean bands, each with a single leaping pair kept large and separated, an acacia and a watching figure for scale — so the eye reads the bound twice rather than once in a crowd. The flat ochre is the desert heat; the black-and-white coats and spiralled horns are the only sharp contrast, which is exactly where the drama should sit. The thin lapis water strip is the one cool line in a dry picture.